The Paper Crane

Ernst Haeckel, born in 1834 in Prus­sia was an accom­plished artist and illus­tra­tor, nat­u­ral­ist, philoso­pher, physi­cian, pro­fes­sor and biol­o­gist. Haeckel is well known for his research and illus­tra­tions of Radi­o­laria and other invert­brates. Haeckel dis­cov­ered and clas­si­fied numer­ous species and coined there bio­log­i­cal names. He believed in art and sci­ence and ded­i­cated his life to both.

Radi­o­laria are amoe­boid pro­to­zoa that pro­duce intri­cate min­eral skele­tons. Like the ones depicted above by Ernst Haeckel.

Haeckel trav­elled the world with his micro­scope, sketch­book and water col­ors map­ping out ani­mals and plant life. His beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions done by hand are incred­i­bly intri­cate and col­or­ful. It is my opin­ion that the beauty of our nat­ural world is the most inspir­ing place to look for design in form, color, bal­ance, line and harmony.

Lichen

Ernst Haeckel (on the left)

As an evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist, it is known that Haeckel sup­ported the the­o­ries of Charles Dar­win and put him on the map by pro­mot­ing much of his work in Ger­many. Haeckel coined the terms Dar­win­ism and ecology.

More Haeckel draw­ings of Radiolarians

Art Forms in Nature or Kun­st­for­men der Natur is a book of 100 of Haeckel’s illus­tra­tions selected from thou­sands. “Kun­st­for­men der Natur is con­sid­ered one of the mar­vels of 19th cen­tury nat­u­ral­ist illus­tra­tion. With their sin­u­ous lines and ten­dency to ide­al­ize nature, these draw­ings are also con­sid­ered a fore­run­ner of the Art Nou­veau move­ment.” (1)

Which now brings me to the lus­cious col­lages of Alexis McKen­zie

McKen­zie, a San Fran­sisco based artist makes beau­ti­ful, painstak­ingly seam­less nature col­lages. The imagery from each piece is del­i­cately cut out from col­lec­tions of old books that McKen­zie has col­lected over the years.

“All of my col­lages are com­posed by hand — cut from books I’ve been col­lect­ing
for years, and painstak­ingly pieced together as seam­lessly as pos­si­ble. They
cre­ate them­selves through a process begin­ning with a loose con­cept, fol­lowed by
a series of tri­als and errors, sub­tle maneu­vers, selection/elimination, har­mo­nious
unions, and happy acci­dents. It is a med­i­ta­tive process, and there is a lot of
decision-making behind each ele­ment involved.

My gen­eral intent, through­out all my work, is to por­tray the world as a flawed
thing of beauty — a place that shines brightly, but has a dark side to match.”–Alexis McKenzie

More work by Alexis Anne McKen­zie and full CV @ http://www.alexisanne.com

Please read more about Alexis’s work in this fea­tured stu­dio visit and inter­view by John Trippe on FecalFace.com

(1) Quote taken from by The MBLWHOI Library of http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/exhibits/haeckel/intro.html

Posted by Dee Clements on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 6:25 pm. You can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.